I think the worst was Earth day. Everyone was suppose to turn off their lights for an hour. I thought, "great, I'll just chill and look at the stars for an hour." Nope. The city kept all the street lights on, most businesses kept their flood lights on, and, may be, half of the houses kept them on too. In the end, just another starless night in the city.
They'll have to employ some tricks like that I think. I took a class on 3D vision that was focused on reconstructing 3D images from 2D. Usually, it requires 2+ images from different angles/locations, but the big step is pixel matching. That is not a fast process by any standard. We got graded based on how fast our implementation was. The fastest implementation in the class was just under 30 sec on a stereo (2) image that was 576x384 pixels large. That 30 seconds did not include the time required to match the feature points either. Even using information from previous frames and whatnot, I just can't see them getting it down to 1/30th of a second.
Well, that depends on how you look at it. By working for 1/4 of my time, I am improving my the rest of my free time by substantially more. I may not be able to put a price on my time, but I can certainly compare the relative difference in value of different seconds of my life. It may be worth trading one second in, if the next is considerably better.
Let me suggest an experiment.... For one year don't buy or use any Microsoft products.... At the same time send the government no money, that is, pay no taxes. Then wait. Watch who comes after you for your money and how and with what weapons.
That quote doesn't really work. If you don't use or buy any MS products, then there is no gain and MS has no loss, so they would have no justification for coming after you. However, your taxes are not without gain. You get roads, emergency services, an army, subsidized utilities of all kinds, etc. Just because you stopped paying your taxes, doesn't mean the police won't help you, or your military won't defend you. If you want a real analogy, it would be:
Let me suggest an experiment.... For one year don't buy or use any Microsoft products.... At the same time move to another country and send the government of your original country no money, that is, pay no taxes for the country you no longer live in. Then wait. Watch who comes after you for your money and how and with what weapons.
I don't pay tax to the UK, because I don't live there. I don't give money to MS because I don't use their products. Neither one will be "coming after me."
Nifty idea, but it could back-fire. I love food, but the main reason I go to a restaurant (over eating at home) is to hang out with friends and the enjoy the atmosphere. I tend to stick with restaurants whose environment promotes conversations/intimacy among friends. There are a number of restaurants I avoid when going out with friends because there are just too many interruptions, uncomfortable or awkward seating, or servers who push you out the door the minute you've paid. Luckily, there are more then enough restaurants out there that value repeat customers and customers who enjoy themselves in their restaurant that I am not going hungry. Give me my 10-15 extra minutes at a table, and you'll have me back next week.
Catalytic converters, a required component in pretty much every car made today (many cars have more then 1), also has platinum. However, they do require relatively little platinum. How much more platinum do fuel cells require?
Because you didn't buy the game, you bought the rights to play the game. If you lease a car, then you are, in fact, limited to a certain number of miles and modifications you can do to it without penalty.
True, but I don't think you would also advertise in the sale that it has "1 year warranty left!" If the seller sold a laptop, advertised it had warranty left, but ripped off the warranty info and didn't transfer it/authorize the buyer, then the seller is at fault. He can't claim ignorance. I would never say something had warranty without at least putting a bit of research into it to determine if warranty can even be transferred. However, the blogger never said if warranty was advertised or not, so who knows.
However, I fail to see why they need warranty or identification information to sell the guy a part. He is not getting his laptop serviced under warranty and is, in fact, paying a huge mark-up on a piece of metal. With Lenovo, I call them up, give them an FRU (part #) and my CC info and a few days later I have a part at my door.
True, but the spirit of the ODF standard is interoperability. Surely MS knew their implementation was not interoperable. They may not have broke the letter of the standard, but they certainly broke the spirit of the standard. However, I have not lost hope for MS yet. If their next step is to talk to everyone involved with ODF about these problems with the standard and work towards a solution to solve said problems, then I'll give them their credit; they would have helped fix an open standard for the better, which is a very-good-thing. However, if their next step is to simply claim ODF is broken, then walk away, then what they did is pretty shameful.
You shouldn't give up on em so fat. I have a wireless Logitech Nano (or something like that) for my laptop. Works like a charm and the battery lasts extraordinarily long (several months). If you are Windows, then the software that comes with it has a warning indicator when your battery is getting low too. The USB receiver is very small, fits in the mouse (harder to lose). For me, the cords on corded mice always have a slight pull on the mouse one way or another, which gets annoying.
It is a simple, fun game. I don't have much time, and while I still like to play games, I really only play for about 20 minutes on average. I like Quake 3 because I can click on the Quake 3 icon, start playing almost immediately, have fun for 20 minutes, then shut it down. It also has a Linux client.
Yes. I work for a gov't agency that does exactly that; research for the governments. It is an agency that has a number of very smart people in their field that basically give recommendations to the government. The final reports are usually an amalgam of the comments and recommendations of people from other gov't agencies, academia, and private business. If governments are passing legislation on something specific to a particular area, then they better be able to come up with sane and rational decisions based on input from all sorts of people, not just lobbyists.
Sorry, reread my previous point and realized I was being rude. Just got tired or reading, pretty much, the exact same reply 10x. The software example is an extreme case, which is why it proves the point so well. But, surely, the same reasoning can be applied to any product. Perhaps, in the end, some technical/physical/cost limitations make it infeasible, but you can always take a look at lowering the price as a way of increasing sales. And certainly, there is always a price point that will maximize revenue. However, we can not assume Amazon hit that point on the dot, and that there is no room for movement (up or down).
OK... Seriously, how can so many people miss the point. I could've used one of many examples where lower prices made a product sell more. I just chose one that was on Slashdot a few weeks back so that people would recognize it. Yeah, it is software, that does not change the fact that price and demand are intimately mixed. Lowering the price will attract more buyers. Yeah, you may not be able to produce 30x as many, but the 50% = 30x increase was obviously an extreme. Anyways, my point was a simple response to a question, "why lower prices if they are already selling units?" The obvious answer is so you can sell more. Perhaps there are technical or physical limitations preventing this, but this does not change the fact that lower prices means more units sold. I was not stating that they can afford to sell a product for half the price, and certainly did not say so in my post. However, assuming Amazon is making no profit is just as foolish as assuming they are making lots of profit. Also, assuming there is no room for cost cutting or price reduction is also absurd. We are also talking about a unit that will generate long-term repeat revenue in the form of books sold for the device (ie. the iPod approach). Selling at a loss is not necessarily a bad thing, if you will make up that loss and more in books sold... I do not pretend to be an economist, and I answered a simple question with a simple answer. It is only you guys reading more into it.
They are machine instructions. So, on Windows, you would need to load some code into the kernel ("device driver") that calls these instructions. As I said, on Vista 32-bit and XP, the Administrator can do this. So, the extra step would be loading a kernel module that writes to the MTRR registers, instead of doing it directly. I should note, making this exploit more generic (work on more then a DQ35 w/ 2GB RAM) requires a bit of skill, certainly more so then would be required to write a no-op Windows driver (seriously, 3 or 4 lines).
No, the difference is the bug is not in Linux's/proc/mtrr proc entry, it is with Intel caching failed writes. Saying the/proc/mtrr entry is the problem is like saying that the internet is a bug the Conficker worm exploited. It clearly isn't, it just used the internet to exploit a vuln in Windows. See the difference? Similarily, I would NOT say that Outlook letting users run executables is a security flaw. That fault clearly lies in the user running it or the policy of the IT dept which should disable it. Personally, I thought my post was giving the nod to Vista (64-bit only) and Win 7, but whatever.
I fully know, and I also fully expect that amazon has people who are much better at economics then me decide the price. However, your example does kind of prove my examples point, since they, in face, sold 30x more copies;)
You missed my point, since I fully agree with you. Yes, E-ink is in no way similar, which is exactly what I'm saying. For what it DOES, it costs too much. It lets you read books. I can do that for $8/book. $350 can buy me a lot of books. However, for what it is (E-Ink display and all), the price makes sense. Personally, I love the idea and love to read, but $350 is still too much for what it will let me do. Once the price of the tech comes down (what it is), I'll buy one in a heart beat.
What comparison? If you lower prices, you will sell more, regardless if it is rival good. The only difference is your profit margin. That said, I was merely pointing out that lower prices makes you sell more. Just because you are selling units at one price point, does not mean lower your price will have adverse side-effects. You could sell enough more that you make up the profit differences. Rival or non-rival.
True. On the other hand, increased demand gives them more reason to up the production rate. The Kindle is also very expensive for what it DOES (not what it is). An e-reader really should be significantly cheaper then, say, a Netbook.
Slashdot Mirror
I think the worst was Earth day. Everyone was suppose to turn off their lights for an hour. I thought, "great, I'll just chill and look at the stars for an hour." Nope. The city kept all the street lights on, most businesses kept their flood lights on, and, may be, half of the houses kept them on too. In the end, just another starless night in the city.
They'll have to employ some tricks like that I think. I took a class on 3D vision that was focused on reconstructing 3D images from 2D. Usually, it requires 2+ images from different angles/locations, but the big step is pixel matching. That is not a fast process by any standard. We got graded based on how fast our implementation was. The fastest implementation in the class was just under 30 sec on a stereo (2) image that was 576x384 pixels large. That 30 seconds did not include the time required to match the feature points either. Even using information from previous frames and whatnot, I just can't see them getting it down to 1/30th of a second.
And I enjoyed every second of it!
Well, that depends on how you look at it. By working for 1/4 of my time, I am improving my the rest of my free time by substantially more. I may not be able to put a price on my time, but I can certainly compare the relative difference in value of different seconds of my life. It may be worth trading one second in, if the next is considerably better.
Value is always relative. To me, every second of my life is priceless.
To paraphrase Richard Saldman
Let me suggest an experiment. ... For one year don't buy or use any Microsoft products. ... At the same time send the government no money, that is, pay no taxes. Then wait. Watch who comes after you for your money and how and with what weapons.
That quote doesn't really work. If you don't use or buy any MS products, then there is no gain and MS has no loss, so they would have no justification for coming after you. However, your taxes are not without gain. You get roads, emergency services, an army, subsidized utilities of all kinds, etc. Just because you stopped paying your taxes, doesn't mean the police won't help you, or your military won't defend you. If you want a real analogy, it would be:
Let me suggest an experiment. ... For one year don't buy or use any Microsoft products. ... At the same time move to another country and send the government of your original country no money, that is, pay no taxes for the country you no longer live in. Then wait. Watch who comes after you for your money and how and with what weapons.
I don't pay tax to the UK, because I don't live there. I don't give money to MS because I don't use their products. Neither one will be "coming after me."
Nifty idea, but it could back-fire. I love food, but the main reason I go to a restaurant (over eating at home) is to hang out with friends and the enjoy the atmosphere. I tend to stick with restaurants whose environment promotes conversations/intimacy among friends. There are a number of restaurants I avoid when going out with friends because there are just too many interruptions, uncomfortable or awkward seating, or servers who push you out the door the minute you've paid. Luckily, there are more then enough restaurants out there that value repeat customers and customers who enjoy themselves in their restaurant that I am not going hungry. Give me my 10-15 extra minutes at a table, and you'll have me back next week.
Catalytic converters, a required component in pretty much every car made today (many cars have more then 1), also has platinum. However, they do require relatively little platinum. How much more platinum do fuel cells require?
Because you didn't buy the game, you bought the rights to play the game. If you lease a car, then you are, in fact, limited to a certain number of miles and modifications you can do to it without penalty.
True, but I don't think you would also advertise in the sale that it has "1 year warranty left!" If the seller sold a laptop, advertised it had warranty left, but ripped off the warranty info and didn't transfer it/authorize the buyer, then the seller is at fault. He can't claim ignorance. I would never say something had warranty without at least putting a bit of research into it to determine if warranty can even be transferred. However, the blogger never said if warranty was advertised or not, so who knows.
However, I fail to see why they need warranty or identification information to sell the guy a part. He is not getting his laptop serviced under warranty and is, in fact, paying a huge mark-up on a piece of metal. With Lenovo, I call them up, give them an FRU (part #) and my CC info and a few days later I have a part at my door.
True, but the spirit of the ODF standard is interoperability. Surely MS knew their implementation was not interoperable. They may not have broke the letter of the standard, but they certainly broke the spirit of the standard. However, I have not lost hope for MS yet. If their next step is to talk to everyone involved with ODF about these problems with the standard and work towards a solution to solve said problems, then I'll give them their credit; they would have helped fix an open standard for the better, which is a very-good-thing. However, if their next step is to simply claim ODF is broken, then walk away, then what they did is pretty shameful.
You shouldn't give up on em so fat. I have a wireless Logitech Nano (or something like that) for my laptop. Works like a charm and the battery lasts extraordinarily long (several months). If you are Windows, then the software that comes with it has a warning indicator when your battery is getting low too. The USB receiver is very small, fits in the mouse (harder to lose). For me, the cords on corded mice always have a slight pull on the mouse one way or another, which gets annoying.
It is a simple, fun game. I don't have much time, and while I still like to play games, I really only play for about 20 minutes on average. I like Quake 3 because I can click on the Quake 3 icon, start playing almost immediately, have fun for 20 minutes, then shut it down. It also has a Linux client.
Unless, of course, the admin has set the box up to require a password for single user mode as well.
Yes. I work for a gov't agency that does exactly that; research for the governments. It is an agency that has a number of very smart people in their field that basically give recommendations to the government. The final reports are usually an amalgam of the comments and recommendations of people from other gov't agencies, academia, and private business. If governments are passing legislation on something specific to a particular area, then they better be able to come up with sane and rational decisions based on input from all sorts of people, not just lobbyists.
Sorry, reread my previous point and realized I was being rude. Just got tired or reading, pretty much, the exact same reply 10x. The software example is an extreme case, which is why it proves the point so well. But, surely, the same reasoning can be applied to any product. Perhaps, in the end, some technical/physical/cost limitations make it infeasible, but you can always take a look at lowering the price as a way of increasing sales. And certainly, there is always a price point that will maximize revenue. However, we can not assume Amazon hit that point on the dot, and that there is no room for movement (up or down).
No shit. However, lowering prices has been shown to increase sales. Certainly not always, but that was my point, plain and simple, not your strawman.
OK... Seriously, how can so many people miss the point. I could've used one of many examples where lower prices made a product sell more. I just chose one that was on Slashdot a few weeks back so that people would recognize it. Yeah, it is software, that does not change the fact that price and demand are intimately mixed. Lowering the price will attract more buyers. Yeah, you may not be able to produce 30x as many, but the 50% = 30x increase was obviously an extreme. Anyways, my point was a simple response to a question, "why lower prices if they are already selling units?" The obvious answer is so you can sell more. Perhaps there are technical or physical limitations preventing this, but this does not change the fact that lower prices means more units sold. I was not stating that they can afford to sell a product for half the price, and certainly did not say so in my post. However, assuming Amazon is making no profit is just as foolish as assuming they are making lots of profit. Also, assuming there is no room for cost cutting or price reduction is also absurd. We are also talking about a unit that will generate long-term repeat revenue in the form of books sold for the device (ie. the iPod approach). Selling at a loss is not necessarily a bad thing, if you will make up that loss and more in books sold... I do not pretend to be an economist, and I answered a simple question with a simple answer. It is only you guys reading more into it.
They are machine instructions. So, on Windows, you would need to load some code into the kernel ("device driver") that calls these instructions. As I said, on Vista 32-bit and XP, the Administrator can do this. So, the extra step would be loading a kernel module that writes to the MTRR registers, instead of doing it directly. I should note, making this exploit more generic (work on more then a DQ35 w/ 2GB RAM) requires a bit of skill, certainly more so then would be required to write a no-op Windows driver (seriously, 3 or 4 lines).
No, the difference is the bug is not in Linux's /proc/mtrr proc entry, it is with Intel caching failed writes. Saying the /proc/mtrr entry is the problem is like saying that the internet is a bug the Conficker worm exploited. It clearly isn't, it just used the internet to exploit a vuln in Windows. See the difference? Similarily, I would NOT say that Outlook letting users run executables is a security flaw. That fault clearly lies in the user running it or the policy of the IT dept which should disable it. Personally, I thought my post was giving the nod to Vista (64-bit only) and Win 7, but whatever.
I can't help laughing when you post AC. Allowing write access to MTRRs is not a bug. Intel caching failed writes is. Cheers.
I fully know, and I also fully expect that amazon has people who are much better at economics then me decide the price. However, your example does kind of prove my examples point, since they, in face, sold 30x more copies ;)
Not really.
You missed my point, since I fully agree with you. Yes, E-ink is in no way similar, which is exactly what I'm saying. For what it DOES, it costs too much. It lets you read books. I can do that for $8/book. $350 can buy me a lot of books. However, for what it is (E-Ink display and all), the price makes sense. Personally, I love the idea and love to read, but $350 is still too much for what it will let me do. Once the price of the tech comes down (what it is), I'll buy one in a heart beat.
What comparison? If you lower prices, you will sell more, regardless if it is rival good. The only difference is your profit margin. That said, I was merely pointing out that lower prices makes you sell more. Just because you are selling units at one price point, does not mean lower your price will have adverse side-effects. You could sell enough more that you make up the profit differences. Rival or non-rival.
True. On the other hand, increased demand gives them more reason to up the production rate. The Kindle is also very expensive for what it DOES (not what it is). An e-reader really should be significantly cheaper then, say, a Netbook.